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Billy_T
ParticipantOn Rothko: I wrote this for my own website back in 2008:
All art is paradox. But Rothko, perhaps more than any other modern painter, embraced the paradox and threw it profoundly in our faces.
The canvas is flat. You can’t enter it. You can’t go through it, if it’s hanging on the wall. At least without injury and perhaps a heavy bill from the gallery. But Rothko continuously tells the audience to do just that. Embrace the painting, enter it, walk into it, let it engulf you and torture you and shake you. Shake the core of you. He wants the painting to be a plane and an entrance way in the same bright moment. Flat and omnipresent. Pressed against the wall as it surrounds you. And he wants you to accept the paradox and reject it long enough to succumb.
“We favor the simple expression of complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.”
Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Russia (now Latvia) in 1903. Rather, Marcus Rothkowitz was born in that place and time. He became Mark Rothko later in life. At the age of 10, he left Russia with part of his family to join the other part in America, arriving at Ellis Island and eventually Portland, Oregon. The culture shock must have been tremendous. From a life filled with the constant threat from Cossacks and the Czar, to one with much more mundane worries. He did, however, have to grow up in a hurry, as his father, Jacob, died not long after their arrival in America. His life from that point on became more and more complex . . .
. . . If one looks only at his most famous paintings, the floating blocks of luminous color, the large canvasses he wants us to enter and celebrate, that person might mistake the surface for stasis, for the lack of evolution and emotion, for a ground that never changed for Rothko. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did his intellectual rationale for his art evolve greatly over time, taking him from an intense study of myths, archetypes, Jung and Freud to Nietzsche and beyond . . . his artistic methods and subject matter evolved as well. Few artists, in fact, changed as dramatically as Rothko, if we look at his career from the 30s until his suicide in 1970. Another paradox. The flat, solid blocks of color, forever floating, and a whirlwind of change before and after.
“I am not an abstractionist. … I am not interested in the relationship of colour or form or anything else. … I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions. … The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!”
I have sat for many an endless moment in front of his paintings, most recently in Washington D.C. Rather than make me weep, they generally bring me tremendous waves of calm and peace. Even though I’m guessing he wasn’t shooting for that reaction, he never did want to limit them or define them or jail them. Enter the painting was all. Only connect was all.
“Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.”
Of course, it’s impossible to sum up a great artist. And rather ridiculous to try. But I think, in a nutshell, Rothko sought something similar to other great modernists like Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Pound, Eliot and Joyce. To reinvent myths, reinvigorate them, and introduce them back into the cultural stream. Most of the great modernists seemed to want this, saw this as vital, essential for our health and survival. Some thought this could be done only through collecting ruins, fragments, the remnant of civilization. They sensed a scattering and a loss of cultural potency that could never be reversed. Others thought the disorder and fragmentation could be overcome. I think Rothko falls into the latter category, and his floating blocks of luminous color contain the detritus of civilizations long gone. Paradoxically, they surround us with the future.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_T
ParticipantWV makes an excellent point above, one that hit me right after I read your post, bnw.
It’s a major misconception about abstract artists that they do X because they don’t have the “talent” to do Y. Y being, usually, copying nature like a Xerox machine, give or take.
Pretty much every single great painter or sculptor generally called “abstract” worked for years and years to get to that place. They started their training doing “representational” art, copied the masters, copied, perhaps, their teachers, drew, painted, sculpted from “life,” and then decided to go in a different direction. They didn’t do it because they had no other choice. They did it because the artist in them pretty much forced them to. They were driven to express themselves in a different manner, one outside the contemporary box. They did what all great artists do, in all the arts: Add another step on the ladder of human/expressive possibilities. Build upon the past and carve out their own place in the progression. Add their name to the legacy of the new, built upon the old.
Also: in reality, all art is “abstract.” All of it is an abstraction from internal/external “nature.” A vision informed by both, simultaneously. Emphases are generally quite different. But all artists attempt to render their personal vision which comes from within.
IOW, “abstract” artists render their own internal vision, informed by the external and internal. It takes just as much “talent” to do what, say, Kandinsky or Picasso did, as opposed to, say, Raphael. The felicity of their expression, their vision, should tell the tale. Not whether or not someone can “copy” things from the external world like a photo — that guy on NPR can do that, and, to me, his stuff isn’t “art.”
To me, in the post-photographic world, the “abstract” is more and more important. If someone wants photographic “realism,” for example, why not just look at photos? Painting and sculpture can give us something photos — with exceptions — can’t generally do: Bring us a direct vision of internal life, connect us with that vision, directly.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_T
ParticipantThanks, Mac,
That’s a really good breakdown. I remembered that you were a student of “conservatism,” as it once was practiced in America.
Billy_T
ParticipantThe left always gets tagged with much higher standards to live up to. Far, far higher.
If the “outsider” candidate is centrist or right-wing, nuff said. They don’t have to explain anything. But if the outsider candidate is left-wing, honestly left-wing, she is immediately tasked with all kinds of hoops to jump through in order to prove their viability as candidate. “What has she ever done!!”
This is something not asked by supporters of Trump, for instance, who also has never won any elective office.
This is also not a requirement for Ms. Clinton, who, while winning elective office, and publicly supporting all kinds of traditional “progressive” causes — for women, minorities and so on . . . . hasn’t actually done anything to improve the lives of POCs or women.
There are some, in fact, who say it’s quite the opposite. Not sure if you guys already posted this article, for instance:
Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_T
ParticipantWell, I see you seeing what I’m seeing as a miss-seeing, so there!
;>)
I don’t see myself as advocating for high-art as a way of unseeing everything else. Or seeing it poorly. Or as snobbery. I’m an artist, by blood and training. Both a visual artist and a poet. So “seeing” is essential to my way of seeing. I see you as saying you see more than I do, more broadly, etc. etc. Needless to say, I don’t see it that way.
Okay, enough of that see stuff. Well, almost. Yes, we “see” things differently. But I’m reading you as saying your way is superior. And I’m guessing you’ll respond by saying, no, that’s not what I’m saying. But it is how I’m reading you.
Regardless . . .
The consumer metaphor is interesting. Even using that, wouldn’t you say it’s a good thing to discern differences of quality, excellence, etc? Even as a mass consumer of mass production, isn’t it wise to see the difference between the consumption of really bad, mass-production food, say, and really good, home-style, locally-sourced food? Let’s say in this case, the prices are the same, and anyone can choose between the two.
Or, mass-produced TVs. Joe and Jane America will usually take the time to read up on the differences between the various brands, perhaps go online and check reviews, compare and contrast, and then buy. Mass produced smartphones, same thing.
Being a consumer doesn’t have to mean engulfing all before you, without discrimination. It doesn’t have to mean the lack of comparing and contrasting, using one’s critical thinking skills to determine levels or degrees of “good or bad.” From where I sit, if a person does that, if he or she just sucks up everything without noticing differences, they’re not really living beings. They’re automatons. As far as I know, ZN, you’re not an automaton.
Or have you been fooling all of us online for the last twenty some years?
;>)
Billy_T
ParticipantWaterfield,
To me, it says great things about her that she keeps running as a Green. She could likely have gained “power” early on, as a member of the Democratic Party, but that would have meant chucking her principles and selling out. So few politicians, in either wing of the Duopoly, have ever avoided that. It’s basically a preexisting condition of our system, which now requires nearly a billion to just get nominated, to all but sell out before hand.
In short, I don’t see her lack of political victories as important in the slightest. It’s a badge of honor, in my book. If she were to win from that perch (The Greens), she would have done something that virtually no other president has done, at least in living memory:
Avoided the complete (or close to it) sell-out necessary to win elections via the Duopoly.
Here’s her “about” page:
And if you just go by this little snippet, her “accomplishments” already trump Trump’s:
Jill received several awards for health and environmental protection including: Clean Water Action’s “Not in Anyone’s Backyard” Award, the Children’s Health Hero” Award, and the Toxic Action Center’s Citizen Award. Jill has appeared as an environmental health expert on the Today Show, 20/20, Fox News, and other programs. She also served on the board of directors for Physicians for Social Responsibility.
She is the co-author of two widely-praised reports, In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development, published in 2000, and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, published in 2009. The first of these has been translated into four languages and is used worldwide as a community tool in the fight for health and the environment. The reports connect the dots between human health, social justice, a healthy environment and green economies.
Jill was born in Chicago and raised in Highland Park, Illinois. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1973, and from Harvard Medical School in 1979.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_T
ParticipantLots of food for thought, there. Like:
I never bought the “real art” argument. To me that’s a regime of taste. It is meant to quixotically distance the people who buy into it from their own time and place and culture and history.
We disagree here, too. I see it as a way to get much closer to one’s time and place, by differentiating between the crap for crap’s sake and the really good to great. Yeah, it’s still “subjective” and a matter of taste. But people can learn to see existing aesthetic differences, differences in quality, differences in successful usage of the media and medium in question. One can learn what it means to push the boundaries of that media or medium, as opposed to the reproduction of kitsch.
Example: I entered my Art classes (Studio and History) with a ton of preconceived notions I later discarded. I grew up revering the “Old Masters,” the Titians, Vermeers, Caravaggios, Rembrandts, Raphaels, etc. etc. I had no patience for “modern art” or “abstract art” as a teen.
But by making abstract art, especially sculpture, doing this with my own two hands, painting abstractly, while also taking courses on the subject of non-representational art . . . . I began to “get it.” I went from someone who stupidly says “My kid sister can do that,” to someone who knows, instinctively, as well as intellectually, “No. Your kid sister would be doing something quite different from that. She wouldn’t have the training and the centuries of theory and practice and knowledge of her craft supporting her — yet. Yet.”
In short, I grew to love abstract art, and made it myself, chose to make it myself. Ironically, “popular culture” still (mostly) disdains it, and you still hear umpteen average Joes and Janes scoff at a Picasso, Kandinsky, Johns, De Kooning, Duchamp, etc. etc. . . . with “My kid sister could do that.” The “popular” way to look at things is to limit what constitutes “art” in that case. The supposedly “elitist” way is the one that is actually far more inclusive and welcoming — at least in this case.
Billy_T
ParticipantThe vast majority of movies are not art. They are a commodity. “Troy” is a commodity.
We agree on that. See, WV? More common ground!!
All art is a commodity. It has value, and is traded for things or money or status or prestige or all of the above.
But taste? That can differ. Within a given range, people have different experiences and like different things.
I’m talking about commodity in the capitalist sense. In the Marxist sense of the capitalist sense. No, not all “art” is a commodity. That implies endless exchange, for the sake of exchange, where the exchange itself, where the result of the exchange (money) is the alpha and omega — and not the art. The sole purpose is to make money, etc. etc.
To commodify something is to alter its purpose to fit inside that box. To be the thing that makes money, and nothing more. If it has “use value” beyond the exchange, that’s just a lucky side effect. The raison d’etre for a commodity under capitalism is to make money for the capitalist.
“Art,” at least from my point of view, is something that radically transcends all of that. That exists prior to those particular economic relations, scoffs at them, radically overcomes them, perhaps even embarrasses and shames them, etc.
Real “art,” in fact, in a kind of meta-narrative, demonstrates the shallowness, the emptiness of culture as commodity*. This has always been an essential part of its tradition(s).
*Milan Kundera’s use of the word “kitsch” fits well here.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_T
ParticipantIs Trump really that different than the others? Good question.
Unlike the others he wears his racism on his sleeve, but I doubt his views on race are much different that any other republican candidate. The thing is, I don’t really think Trump really gives a shit about building a wall. I also don’t think he cares about abortion. He says he does because he’s courting the right and they are big talking points with them. What does Trump really care about? Deregulation.
I think that’s a very accurate statement. He also cares about lowering his own taxes, and will, if he’s elected. In short, he’s neoliberal on economic issues, just like Hillary. And for all of his fascist bluster, I actually think he’ll be less inclined to go to war than Hillary, though more inclined to go to DEFCON 2 if he’s in one. Or DEFCON 1 if he’s in two.
Two rotten choices, again. We get more choices with our cereals, and they’re all too much alike as well.
Billy_T
ParticipantThe vast majority of movies are not art. They are a commodity. “Troy” is a commodity.
We agree on that. See, WV? More common ground!!
Billy_T
ParticipantZooey was noting how awful the Dem-Rep choice is this time around. But think about it — is it REALLY that different than in past years? Really? Are Trump-the-billiaire-business-man and Clinton-the-insider all that different from the McCains and Kerrys and Bushs and Bill-Clintons and Obamas and Nixons etc? I dunno. I dont think they are that different. Trump has that outsiders ‘talk-radio’ demeanor but is he REALLY worse than GW ?
Perhaps the main difference is just a matter of likability and style. The two current choices are the least likeable (on a personal level) in decades, and their styles annoy the hell out of large numbers of Americans. Prior to his election, Dubya was thought to be very (personally) likeable, for example. Gore wasn’t. Bush won largely on the strength of that, and certainly not his policy ideas. He managed to persuade millions of Democrats to vote for him, instead of Gore, etc. etc.
So, yeah, when it comes to what they actually want to do in office, and will do, it isn’t all that different from the usual. They’ll both protect the ruling class, capitalism itself, the empire, and bomb a lot of people. They’re both “conservatives,” as are pretty much all the eventual nominees from both parties (at least since the 1960s) . . . though Trump has to appeal to people to the right of “conservative” who think of themselves as conservatives still. Clinton doesn’t have that burden. She can be straight up conservative, and still fool most “progressives” along the way.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_T
ParticipantTake history. I like, in a rather unsophisticated pure pleasure way, Brit historical dramas. The King’s Speech. Elizabeth. The Queen. Rob Roy. The Madness of King George.
I think we may still be talking past one another. I like those films, too. Loved the first two, especially. Cate Blanchett was otherworldly as Elizabeth, and I noticed how the director crafted sets as if they were 16th and 17th century paintings. Beautifully done, beautifully acted. No. It didn’t bother me that they “took liberties” with history. This is where the “they all do it” part kicks in and makes sense to me.
But Homer isn’t history. His world is larger than life. His world contains myriad metaphors for our lives, and, as with pretty much all the best myth, points to deep psychological dynamics lesser works can’t touch. To me, messing with that is messing with the sacred. I don’t see “history” as sacred, and have never expected movies to stick to that book.
I probably also misread you in another way: I got the sense that you were saying a director MUST make changes to source material, or he or she isn’t an “artist.” I disagree with that take — a perspective you may or may not actually hold. IOW, a film director — or screenwriter — doesn’t have to change one iota of a story in order for it to be “art,” or for him or her to be an “artist,” or for their work process to also be an artistic process. The medium of film is perhaps unique in that way. That the decisions regarding how to visualize a story on the screen aren’t any less “artistic” for toeing the line with original source material. Sticking strictly to it, or deviating wildly from it, isn’t what makes it “art,” or the process artistic, or the director an artist, etc. etc. Other things do that. David Lean, for instance, took liberties with Pasternak’s book, and T.E Lawrence’s, but he created cinematic masterpieces all the same. And, given what he did produce, it’s fair to say, he would have created masterpieces had he been slavishly devoted to the original — though we’ll never know that counterfactual, etc.
Anyway . . . and to repeat: It’s not so much “change” per se. It’s “what” is changed. In the case of Troy, wiping out certain characters with their own set of vital, essential ancient myths (Agamemnon and the House of Atreus, et al) seems almost nihilistic to me. I didn’t see it adding to the movie at all, and it didn’t make sense as a plot device. Going back to the movies you cited, their changes “worked” for me. They worked artistically, etc.
Billy_T
ParticipantYou don’t like The White Album, Abbey Road and their last album, The Beatles?
You are one twisted spinal cracker, without his mojo filter.
;>)
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_T
ParticipantPA,
I read all the books. They’re page turners, but not especially well-written page turners, IMO. They did hook me, but all along the way, I could find serious faults with the plotting and the prose.
The HBO show, in many ways, is better than the book series. But it can suffer from what you bring up, which is also a problem with the books. Martin includes too many characters, doing too many things, draws this all out far too long, and creates unnecessary problems for his own books. I think he could have used his own Maxwell Perkins. But once you get that famous, publishing houses and agents are often too afraid to suggest paring things down a bit.
He may never finish his epic.
Yep. They have to move the Arya plot forward, and I have no idea where it’s going. I suspect, however, she will end up with Daenarys, and Daenarys will end up with Jon Snow as co-ruler of Westeros. If the Night’s King doesn’t get them all first.
Billy_T
ParticipantAnother example, of course, would be a Shakespeare play.
Modern directors will tweak the settings, sometimes bring them into the 20th or 21st century, alter genders, etc. etc. But the plot is seldom changed in any significant way. The same folks die, for the same reasons, for the most part. It’s pretty rare that a director would, say, choose to keep Romeo and Juliet alive at the end, or have Hamlet kill Ophelia, though I suppose someone, somewhere, has tried it.
To make a long story short . . . . it’s not the fact of changing things here and there that bugs me. I love improv, Jazz, Blues, etc. etc. It’s the shattering of the story in the process. It’s the complete rejection of 2700 years of plot line that pisses me off. Not “change,” per se. But the trashing of the original in the process.
Billy_T
ParticipantAs Vinnie Barbarino once said, “I’m so confused!”
;>)
We don’t disagree about what artists have done through the years, centuries, millennia. Yes, there is endless recreation, recombining, alteration to go with the creation. That is a part of the deal, the process, the making of art. I think where things went off-track is that I did take your comments as totalizing. They did strike me as “you’re wrong. I’m right. That’s a fact, Jack, and there is no other way to look at this.”
We also use different words to express different things, when it comes to “art,” which is kind of a sacred thing to me. I have no religion. Am an atheist, and a “No gods, no Masters” sorta guy. But “art”? That’s about as close as I get to thinking that there is something “divine” in this world. And, yeah, I’m exaggerating here to make a point.
So when I see the word, I think of genius and the extraordinary and the “original,” to the degree possible. I don’t see all attempts at “art” as being “art.” Most, in fact, fail. And because of that, I can’t give a filmmaker an automatic pass at slicing and dicing source material to his or her heart’s content. It has to actually make sense within the world they depict; it has to actually rise to “art,” in order for me to call it that.
I didn’t see that at all with the movie Troy. I saw it as willful and self-indulgent change for change’s sake, and a far cry from the power of the source material.
Basically, when something is so brilliant already, so self-contained, while sending us into a multitude of other directions, why change it? It’s far more than the old “if it aint broke, don’t fix it,” thing. A gazillion levels beyond that. It’s why mess with virtual perfection (beyond minor variations) at all? Why not just try to bring it, intact, to a new audience — that is a major achievement in and of itself, IMO.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_T
ParticipantWV,
BT likes his myth-movies one narrow way. You like a broader spectrum of myth-movies.
Just a minor quibble here. I don’t see it as “narrow.” I see certain myths as so amazing, so fresh, still, so capacious, riveting, exhilarating and relevant that to reproduce them, basically as is, just brings all of that to a new audience. As in, it’s already “broad-spectrum.” It already contains multitudes, etc.
From where I sit, Hollywood directors who feel the need to radically tweak them don’t come close to the originals in terms of power, dramatic flow or intensity, and I’ve yet to see one which expands upon the original source. From where I sit, they actually “narrow” the effects.
But that’s me. Others don’t see things that way, obviously.
Billy_T
ParticipantZN,
Not going by “argument from authority.” Was responding to your insistence that you know what art is, and I supposedly don’t. My first degree was in Art Studio, with a minor in Art History. I know the “history” part too. I also have never stopped studying the history of the humanities in general, and have more than enough credits for a degree in Literature, and an MFA if I want to go back. I was taught music while young, with an emphasis on its history, too. We both have strong backgrounds on the subject. You teach it. I could teach it. And so on.
Again, I don’t think we’re even talking about the same thing here, though I am getting the idea that we disagree on what qualifies as “art.”
Oh, well. This too shall pass.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_T
ParticipantNo you’re not. You’re playing rope the dope and I’m the dope.
bnw,
Believe what you want. But, yes, I’m being 100% sincere in my remarks on this issue. I’ve been saying this about the Dems for a long time. To me, it’s self-evidently the case. The Dems now inhabit the conservative realm Republicans have vacated. The Dems have been a center-right party for decades, and because the GOP has purged all of its liberals, moderates and almost all of its actual conservatives, it can no longer accurately claim that ground. It (the GOP) is now the radical right, and is well to the right of “conservative.” In my opinion, which is more than sincere, the GOP can no longer accurately claim that word as its own.
Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to. But that’s a different story.
Billy_T
ParticipantVery true about Homer. He just put down already ancient myth on paper, drawing from a very rich oral tradition. But that tradition was pretty careful to stay fairly much within the same parameters, with wiggle room allowed for small differences, play, variations on a theme, improv and so on. But it was vital for those storytellers than the audience know the basics, the names, who died when and where, and they kept to that. They didn’t try to throw their audiences off by killing off a character who normally goes on to many other adventures, simply because they could. It wasn’t generally a self-indulgent art in Homer’s time.
Anyway, I think we’re likely talking past each other at this point, and perhaps about really different things.
Billy_T
ParticipantYou might go with that but art doesn’t. Art picks things up from the past and alters and recombines them. It just does.
ZN, again, I’m an artist, from a family of artists. I know what art is, what it does, where it comes from.
Perhaps the problem here is that you’re a bit too quick to label something “art.” I don’t think the movie “Troy,” for instance, qualifies. Not all films do.
And, there are wildly different ways to draw from the past, to recombine things, to alter them and remake them. Not every choice along the way should be automatically accepted, just because one wants to call it all “art.” Even when it comes to their masterpieces, for instance — painting, sculpture, musical composition, poetry, novel, film and so on — few artists are satisfied with all of their choices. Most are not. Many frequently go back and redo things over time, like Yeats, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Picasso and Van Gogh.
(The latter, if he had lived past 37, likely would have redone or destroyed more than a few profoundly beautiful works, IMO.)
Also, if a filmmaker decides to make a movie about an ancient myth, he or she has already decided NOT to do something “original” per se. They have made a conscious decision to adhere to, at least somewhat, source material. If they change it here and there, it’s still not an “original” work of the imagination. It still uses the foundation of another’s, directly-sourced work, which goes into the credits. It is a reproduction, with alterations, good and bad. Calling it “art” automatically, IMO, jumps the gun and then some.
June 9, 2016 at 11:31 am in reply to: For liberals and conservatives, ideology trumps scientific consensus… #45735Billy_T
ParticipantI think the author also dismissed the work of Chris Moody too quickly. He’s not alone. There is a growing pile of evidence showing the differences in the way people on the left and right think — though I wish they’d extend this beyond the usual liberal/conservative paradigm:
“What’s really fascinating is that there have been a number of recent studies looking at brain structural differences between liberals and conservatives,” said Saltz. “And what’s been found in several studies is that liberals tend to have a larger anterior cingulate gyrus. That is an area that is responsible for taking in new information and that impact of the new information on decision making or choices. Conservatives tended on the whole to have a larger right amygdala. Amygdala being a deeper brain structure that processes more emotional information—specifically fear-based information,” Saltz explained.
While understanding brain structure could be helpful when engaging in any bipartisan negotiation that reaches across the aisle, of course, as Saltz explains, “it’s not black-and-white” for every individual. But it does give a pretty good guess at which kind of appeal could resonate more successfully with the political other, depending on how they respond to fear-based decision-making and how open they are to new information.
“Basically the study showed that if you just based it on brain structural size difference, you could predict who would be a conservative and who would be a liberal with a frequency of 71.6 percent; 71.6 percent is a pretty high ability to predict who is a conservative and who is a liberal just from brain structure,” Saltz said.
June 9, 2016 at 11:20 am in reply to: leave Hillary out of it in THIS thread…in his own terms, what is Trump #45732Billy_T
ParticipantTrump’s policy is to follow existing immigration law.
That’s not a policy. That’s just standard practice, which Obama also goes by.
And what on earth does that continuation have to do with improving wages for the working Joe or Jane? Nada. Zilch. Nothing.
It’s not a policy or a program. It’s a bumper sticker.
Billy_T
ParticipantYou really take the cake. Your lack of sincerity and my wasting my time addressing it sure makes me the fool. Have you been living under a rock since Obama was elected?
You’re making it personal, bnw. I’m absolutely sincere in what I’ve written.
Beyond that: you posted one Op Ed, by Elizabeth Price Foley, who works at Cato, and is an advocate for the Tea Party. Just one editorial. That proves nothing. She is also one of the leads in the lawsuit by the House against the ACA.
Come on. Please find articles that have at least a little bit of objectivity to support your claims.
Billy_T
ParticipantDemocrats are now the “true conservatives in America”? Interesting. So actively ignoring immigration law is conservative? Going around congress to get the ACA is conservative? The Iran Deal is conservative? Blaming the police is conservative? Appointing Sotomayor and Kagan to the US Supreme Court is conservative? So many others.
What immigration laws have been ignored? Be specific, please. And the ACA was passed by a majority in both houses, after nearly two years of debate, negotiations, compromises and so on. It was done within Congress, not outside it, and it was done according to Congressional rules. I don’t like the bill. But saying it bypassed Congress is wildly false.
The Iran Deal is traditional American policy. America gave up absolutely nothing and gets to monitor Iran’s nuclear programs in return for that nothing. It gets to impose its will on Iran, force it to obey “or else,” for no other reason than it can.
And what on earth do you mean by “blaming the police? For what? When, where, etc. etc.? Again, please be specific.
As for Kagan and Sotomayer. They’re both moderates who would have been acceptable to the pre-Reagan GOP, easily. But, since the GOP is no longer “conservative” at all — being much further to the right than that — moderates are seen as “far left.” They aren’t. They’re both mainstream judges who uphold traditional American jurisprudence and generally take the side of the Establishment over everyone else.
In short, yes, the Dems are the true conservatives now. The GOP is well to the right of that.
June 9, 2016 at 10:22 am in reply to: leave Hillary out of it in THIS thread…in his own terms, what is Trump #45722Billy_T
ParticipantMy post answered each question. I addressed his policy regarding ILLEGAL immigration and its effect on the US worker. Could have addressed its effect upon the US taxpayer but that wouldn’t have mattered with you.
It actually didn’t answer those questions. It just basically repeated what Trump says about what he’ll supposedly do, which is too vague to parse. It’s all bluster about the amazing things he will “get done,” just because he’s the greatest deal-maker in history, and it will all magically come to fruition — because he says it will. He has zero track record of doing any of these things he vaguely references in his word salad speeches.
Nor has he demonstrated an ounce of knowledge about the economy or how it works. And he’s absolutely wrong about the effects of undocumented workers on wages. They don’t drive them down at all. People like Trump drive them down. Business owners drive them down. The capitalist system is set up to drive them down. That’s how business owners get rich, if they haven’t inherited everything. They get rich by suppressing wages. The more they want to keep for themselves, the more they suppress them.
Trump is scapegoating the powerless in order to distract you from the people pissing all over you. And Trump is one of them.
June 9, 2016 at 10:12 am in reply to: leave Hillary out of it in THIS thread…in his own terms, what is Trump #45721Billy_T
ParticipantPA,
Well said.
Yep, he’s a conartist, first and foremost. He’d be selling rotten used cars if he hadn’t inherited tens of millions.
And it’s amazing how that kind of money insulates people. He’s not even good at being a businessman, which is supposedly a big source of his attraction. Bankruptcies, three or four times, all kinds of failed business deals, etc. Paying off government officials to suppress lawsuits and further investigations. And why on earth any working person would think he could give a shit about their wages is a first class mystery. He makes his money by screwing workers left and right, and has never, not once, even remotely discussed a plan to improve wages or working conditions for Americans.
He just scapegoats the people who have nothing to do with that: Mexicans “feriners” in general.
Trump is a disgusting piece of shit, and he may well become our next president. Too bad the Dems decided to run someone who doesn’t offer more than “Not as bad as Trump.” And in some areas of policy, she may not be able to claim even that.
Billy_T
ParticipantOh, and speaking of Game of Thrones, a series I like . . . . just found out via Wiki that one of its Show Runners, David Benioff, worked on “Troy.”
He seems to have shifted on the topic of keeping close to the source material since then. While there are differences between the HBO show and the Martin originals, and it’s now gone beyond them in time, they did try to keep it close. Martin has so many different characters, and so many different plates in the air at the same time, TV producers, even those who have the luxury of a series, have to consolidate here and there. So I get that. I just don’t get change for change’s sake, especially when the original is much better and more powerful (Homer, Aeschylus, Virgil, etc.)
Billy_T
ParticipantYou and I differ on that, ZN.
I definitely go with “reverence for the original,” when the original is spectacularly cool as is. And I find it illogical to call a movie X, Y or Z, if it’s not going to be a depiction of X, Y or Z. Don’t put in “based on X, Y or Z,” when it’s clearly not. Just do your own “original” and call it something else. Make it new, as Pound said.
And I say the above as an artist. A painter, poet and aspiring novelist, and as someone fascinated by art, too. Always have been, since I was a wee lad. Always will be.
Billy_T
ParticipantWV,
I think you’re right about that. Hollywood doesn’t do them justice.
The recent attempt at Homer’s Iliad, “Troy,” just killed me. I will never understand why Hollywood directors feel they need to mess with (and rewrite) Greek myths — or any other kind of ancient story — which have stood the “test of time” for well over two millennia. They are loaded with more than enough drama, suspense, action, excitement, psychological insight, etc. etc. . . . to be left as is. Not one change is necessary. Yet they inevitably feel they can’t leave them alone.
In the movie “Troy,” they even destroy their own chance at sequels, which are there in the myths. They kill off Agamemnon there, for some inexplicable reason, instead of going with time-honored stories of his Return and murder while at home, by his wife, Clytemnestra. Lots of other weird changes in the movie script, which, to me, just didn’t improve upon the myths, at all.
They never do.
Oh, well.
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